Happy new year! It is time to get your year started with some good, quality writing from around the web. Here are my picks for the weekend — I hope you enjoy them.
- The end and Don King: The legendary boxing promoter with wild hair is entering the twilight years of his life and career. It is a reminder that in the end only time wins.
- Degenerate Inc: The paranoid and obsessive life of a mid-level bookie. Doug Brown of Cleveland Scene wrote this pretty amazing piece.
- I was a warehouse wage slave: Mac McClelland of Mother Jones goes undercover and finds how it all works. It makes you pause before you click and order on Amazon Prime.
- The Intelligent Plant: Michael Pollan asks the no-no question — can plants think? And then he enters down a rabbit hole of magical writing, scientific discovery and perhaps the most thought-provoking piece I have read in a long time. Curl up and read this — it is worth the price of the entire issue of the New Yorker.
- Why TED is a recipe for civilizational disaster: Benjamin Bratton made this proclamation this at a TEDx event in San Diego. He asked the question a lot of us have secretly wondered: why so little of the future promised in TED talks actually happens?
- Does journalism have a future? Nicolas Lemann reviews George Brock’s Out of Print and takes a look at the state of journalism, specially in the U.S.
- Managing a mind: Christopher Murphy shares his story: why one day in May he tried to kill himself and what led to that decision and his life ever since. This is a short piece story that deals with depression and perils of living in a connected, always-on, always-winning society.

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